Deck Refurbishment

[DwayneSpeer]

I have a 30 year old Flying Dutchman 37 that my wife and I love but I've never fully succeeded in getting the deck completely sealed so I need to refurbish it in some way to get it sealed. Unfortunately I'm too cheap and poor to have it done commercially and I just don't want to strip off the teak in favor of a fiberglass deck replacement. So here is what I propose to do this summer. Fortunately I live in a desert climate so drying everything out is a regular summer affair.

I'll pull all the deck screws, a few at a time, and redrill them a size larger. I'll also put in as much Get Rot or similar thin epoxy material to stabilze the balsa core as much as possible. Replace the deck screws and bungs. I'll then remove the seam sealing materials and route out the seams to 1/4 inch deep. Again fortunately the original teak is still quite thick; probably 3/8 inch. I'll then swab out the seams with acetone and place a strip of thin line masking tape in the bottom of the grooves and recaulk with Teak Decking Systems SIS440 or similar material.

So my question is "Does this sound like a good plan or should I be doing something else, short of removing the deck and replaceing all including the coring?"

[sailingdog]

If you're going to be bothering to redrill all the holes a size larger, you'd be better off properly potting each fastener hole. It's a lot more work than using GitRot, but it is a much better, more robust, solution.

GitRot and other thin epoxies are basically useless if the core material is still wet. Reaming it out and replacing it with thickened epoxy is a much better solution.

[sailingfool]

Whether your proposal makes any sense really depends on how wet the core is...if there is only localized moisture around some of the mounting screws, your approach may stabilize the damage to what exists now. Skip the Get Rot idea, as SD mentioned its for dry damage. If your deck core is very wet, say 20% or more, all you will achieve at best, is to encapsulate what water is already there - you will not fix any existing damage. Sounds like a half sized solution to me.